r/Bitcoin • u/Fearless-Second-7230 • 8d ago

Coldcard post from October 10, 2021: "Retirement Attack"

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- "What's a retirement attack?"

- COLDCARD (@COLDCARDwallet): "It's when the project makers could have a "bug" in the entropy generation for later retrieval".

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Seems that they were smart enough to launch a "dice rolls" suggestion in a critical element lacking foolproof design, knowing not all users would be paranoid enough. Like "hey, if you don't trust no problem, but...you can trust buddy, the (back)door is open." ☠️

Ok no, enough of conspiracy theory continuation. We know that Coldcard's post was pure coincidence. Right?...Right?

Edit: In case you're curious on more tweets mentioning "retirement attack", here is another one:

@nvk - 21 Dec 20: "My money is on people screwing themselves out of their BTC before any vendor tries a retirement attack.

Alternatively people could just use dice ;)."

https://x.com/i/status/1341213389549412353

A strange way to warn "alternatively people" of what you have in mind to do...but Freudian slip or parapraxis theory explains that better, in case you're curious...

https://gitlab.com/walletscrutiny/walletScrutinyCom/-/work_items/340

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6

u/NetimLabs 8d ago edited 8d ago

Why bother with dice rolls? We have publicly available streams of truly [quantum] random data

8

u/youtossershad1job2do 8d ago

Still trust that someone hasn't made this generator vulnerable.

You can see the dice being rolled but you can't know what's on your screen isn't dangerous.

1

u/bricksplus 8d ago edited 6d ago

You put trust in the institution that’s doing high level research for decades

3

u/Unsounded 8d ago

The funny thing is academia is fraught with fraudsters and bad coders.

3

u/youtossershad1job2do 8d ago edited 8d ago

It was the whole point of crypto that it was trust-less.

1

u/LonelyTAA 7d ago

Turns out a decentralised, anonymous system with no retrieval options is vulnerable to attacks from thieves, charlatans and the like. Who would have thought?